Creating and Dispersing Universes Again and Again

Ashkal Alwan is happy to invite you to the Beirut launch of the second edition of Jalal Toufic's Forthcoming, followed at 8:30 pm by the keynote lecture “Creating and Dispersing Universes Again and Again” by the author, presented as part of the closing events for Chapter 5 of HWP 2013-14 and introduced by Anton Vidokle.

TUESDAY, JULY 15, 2014

Public

7 pm: book launch of the second edition of Jalal Toufic's Forthcoming, published by e-flux journal & Sternberg Press in April 2014.

"Jalal Toufic is a thinker whose influence in the Beirut artistic community over the past two decades has been immense—notwithstanding that, as he put it, many, if not all of his books, most of which were published by Forthcoming Books, 'continue to be forthcoming even after their publication.' In relation to one of these books, he wondered: 'Does not a book titled Forthcoming suggest, ostensibly paradoxically, a second edition?' Here’s the revised edition of Forthcoming, a book first published nearly a decade and a half ago by Atelos press."

–Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle

"I once wrote, 'I am not able to find my thoughts without passing through his words, books, and concepts.' Now, eight years later, things seem to have gotten worse (or better).

Jalal wrote in Distracted:

— Are you saying this to me?

— Also to myself. One should speak solely when also speaking to oneself. Only then is there a dialogue.

I can also think of the following situation:

— Are you saying this to me?

— Yes. And not to myself. And only to you.

Or an instance in which the following is heard:

— Are you saying this to me?

— Also to myself. One should speak solely when also speaking to oneself. Only then is there a duologue."

—Walid Raad

Jalal Toufic is a thinker and a mortal to death. He was born in 1962 in Beirut or Baghdad and died before dying in 1989 in Evanston, Illinois. He is the author of, among other books, (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film (1993; 2nd ed., 2003), Forthcoming (2000), The Withdrawal of Tradition Past a Surpassing Disaster (2009), What Is the Sum of Recurrently? (2010), and What Were You Thinking? (2011). Many of his books, most of which were published by Forthcoming Books, are available for download as PDF files at his website. He was most recently a participant in the Sharjah Biennial 11, the 9th Shanghai Biennale, Documenta 13, the 3rd Athens Biennale, Art in the Auditorium III (Whitechapel Gallery …), Six Lines of Flight (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), and Meeting Points 6 (Beirut Art Center and Argos). In 2011, he was a guest of the Artists-in-Berlin Program of the DAAD.